If it's an in-house web application, and he's not distributing it to a third party, the GPL requirement to distribute code along with his application no longer applies. The users are using the services the software provides, but at no time is it distributed to them.
Of course, GPL 3 works around this by applying to web services as well as software distribtion. So it's just a question of when / if MySQL AB adopts GPL 3.
The documents for the GPS system all claim that it's about reducing road congestion, but I do not find this justification to be credible.
Firstly, there are ways for charging tolls on congested roads that are far cheaper and easier to implement than putting a "Little Brother" in everyones car. A mandatory RFID unit in the number plate and a pickup loop in the road come to mine. And secondly, it's not credible that road pricing is any more effective at reducing congestion on roads that are the only viable option for a particular commute, in the light that the far more obvious negative motivator of the unpleasantness of driving in a traffic jam does not have a similar effect.
The disadvantage of this method is that it can only track you in areas with the infrastructure. Of course, this is not a disadvantage of your only goal (as stated) is to reduce congestion. On the other hand, it's a real downer if your real aim is to track the whereabouts of every vehicle in Britain, whether they be on the motorway or the moors. Since the alternative is so much cheaper to implement (by their own estimates, a GPS onboard unit would cost £100, without the labour to fit it, some £3 billion pounds to fit to the UK fleet of 30 million vehicles), one has to conclude that this is their aim.
Once you note the EU directives quoted in these documents that refer to an EU-wide standard for GPS road-tolling, it's not difficult to see that this is something that has had widespread approval for some time.
And you have to start wondering about the real reasons for Galileo. They can claim they want independance from the US, and the way the US has been acting, this is more credible now. But one of the features of Galileo is that it has been designed to operate far better than GPS in urban areas, which would seem ideal for the purpose of vehicular tracking. I can't help but make the association.
While we might not like it, an RFID system would be less invasive, would be able to specifically target high congestion roads (which is the stated aim of the program), and wouldn't require you to pay for a state-mandated tracking device to be fitted in your car. The capital cost per car would be greatly reduced - the costs for a GPS unit capable of cellular communication must be an order of magnitude higher than a bumper mounted RFID unit.
On British roads, I'm prepared to bet that you could even use existing infrastructure - the inductions loops fitted in roads as traffic-light pickups would probably make fine antennae for the RFID tags.
I'm sure that I can't be the only person to come to this obvious conclusion, which is why I'm doubtful about the motivation for this scheme ; if it's just about road charging and congestion reduction, then the RFID method achieves these aims at substantially lower cost. The only limitation it has is coverage:- you are limited to tracking the movement of vehicles on roads with RFID pickups. If your scheme is to charge for movement on busy roads to reduce congestion, then you only need coverage for those roads.
Employing Ockhams' Razor ; the UK govermnent must want 100% coverage, if they are prepared to spend so much extra to get it. Since 100% coverage is not required to fulfill their stated aims, and a cheaper solution exists which would achieve their stated goals, their actual goals must be different from those stated. The obvious goal that 100% tracking coverage satisfies is the automated surveillance of their citizens movements.
They want to track us all, and they are lying about it. That strikes me as deeply sinister.
The real bitch is the drop in Energy Profit Ratio.
Oil has historically required one barrel of oil, to extract thirty, although this decreases as the well becomes emptied. Biofuels, as noted elsewhere on this thread, have an EPR more like 1:3. The alternative fossil sources such as oil shale are all unproven technologies, but none have a projected EPR above 5.
The western economy depends on growth. How fast do you think it will continue to grow when energy costs 10 times as much? We are dependant on fossil fuels as energy and feedstock for heat, light, food, transport, plastics, pharamaceuticals, chemicals.
It doesn't take a sudden absence of fuel. A mere decline in the supply, particularly at a time when demand is set to rise sharply with the growth of the Chinese economy and others, should be sufficient to precipitate a recession of epic proportions.
It takes 10 calories of oil to produce every calorie of food the US consumes. I'd imagine all our belts will be tightening when we have less than one tenth (1:3 = 2 spare barrels instead of 29 spare) of the energy to devote to lining our bellies.
Of course, your father is not reputed to be blessed with inifite wisdom and godly powers, even if it seems like it when you are of a certain age.
The point being, that human beings believe that God is benevolent, and loves them. If he is omnipotent, he may arrange matters as he wishes. Therefore, if a person suffers, it is because God wishes them to suffer. Which makes a lie of the claim of benevolence. Or God is unaware of the suffering, which rules out omniscience. Or God cannot create conditions under which people are happy (or even lack suffering). Which rules out omnipotence. If a supernatural being exists, it must lack between one and three of these qualities which are usually assigned to God (or the being is absent), in order for the observable facts to be consistent.
Yes, I agree that a superintelligent being would probably have some actions and motivations that would confuse me. But since we are simple beings, driven by simple urges, how can such a being i) Fail to understand what makes us suffer, and conversely, makes us happy (esp. since said being is our alleged creator). ii) Fail to be able to create an environment in which suffering ends.
Anticipated card played by opponent.... "Free Will : Man Chooses to Suffer"
Free will is horseshit. My free will sayeth : I will now fly around the room in my jimjams. It doesn't happen. That's because I lack wings/jetboots/antigrav belt. We never have free will, because we are always constrained by the limitations of our bodies, minds and environment. Who defined the bodies, minds, enviroment? They are either the result of an impersonal universe of forces, or someone who knew all along what he was creating, before he created it. If the latter, since it was inevitable that much suffering would occur (and he must have been aware of that, if he possesses the attributes detailed in various religious texts), that would make him a sadist of the highest order.
My non-belief in God is just that ; a belief. It requires faith, as does the position the theist must adopt. I cannot disprove the existence of supernatural being(s). But my observations cannot reconcile the state of the world and its people with the stated religious dogma of the prevailing faiths. Hence, I find it far more comfortable to realise that nothing in the universe gives a shit, except those remarkable collections of matter within it that have attained sentience.
I mean, if you believe in a deity that treats you like crap and perpetually keeps you in the dark about his plans for you, that's your problem. Sounds like something very similar to your Father/Son scenario.
Like all forms of suffering, you can just play the "Mysterious Ways" trump card, and be instantly absolved of explaining why a being that is supposedly omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent permits suffering to happen.
The obvious logical explanation is that either there is no such being ; either it is absent or a supernatural sentience does exist, but lacks at least one of those three qualities (i.e. it doesn't know, can't do anything about it or doesn't care).
Of course, logical arguments are usually countered with the "La-la-la, I'm not listening." move or the "Repeat my viewpoint over and over again in lieu of actually providing a chain of logic" tactic.
You could proabably make a trading card game based on this... "Atheists vs <insert most culturally appropriate religion here>". Heck, you could have different sets of booster packs for each religion. I hereby patent this idea!
You can centrifuge so you don't really need any chemicals
Not true ; in order to get the material into a state which *can* be centrifuged (or other means of seperation, like gas chromatography), you do need noxious chemicals aplenty, like flourine.
Yes. Existing internal combustion engines all emit water in their exhausts ; the thing is that they also emit carbon dioxide (and a few other things in smaller amounts). This is because they burn hydrocarbon fuels, which are largely compounds of carbon and... hydrogen.
While H2 engines would emit more water than hydrocarbon engines for a given amount of output, the water is going to be driven off road surfaces by the usual forces that drive exhaust water off roads now ; friction heating by tyres, radiative heating by engines, and turbulent convection caused by passing vehicles.
It's not that they're blinded by profit. They are required to do so by American law.
American corporate law states that the profit of the shareholders is the primary consideration. Corporations are legally required to do that which maximises profits, even if it offends their personal sensibilities. After a while, only those people with no personal moral codes can put up with this, which is why it is certainly not cream that floats to the top of American industry.
Seriously, if this company had determined that the best way to maximise profits was to produce image discrimination software that made it easier for psychotic dictators to precision-bomb orphanages with anthrax, that's what they would be doing. Because under American law, it would be illegal for them to ignore that avenue of profits.
Until western culture learns to value things other than money and power, this will continue. Of course, by making things like happy family life, unpolluted environments, health, good food and security such rarities, they are already working to increase their value ; who knows, in a couple of decades, maybe they will be rare enough to be valuable....
HTML-based e-mails are the main reason I use a CLI (text-ui) e-mail reader. More exactly, Mutt. HTML messages get rendered using a CLI web browsers (w3m).
How the hell is that going to make any difference?
CLI Browsers don't follow tags, not even to convert the pictures into ASCII art.....
There was actually a question on the Nanodot board a while ago by a chap who was researching the feasibility of embedding a unique identifier in *every* round of ammunition, using barcoded fragments of microscopic wire, or similar. So there are people who want to make a buck from this.
We pointed out that that it would require the mother of all gun-control bills to pass to be a viable product, and that the NRA would probably have hunted him down long before that.
The skimpy clothes are a valid combat tactic. Think about it ; you're coming up against professional mercs, a profession dominated by high-testosterone macho guys. Personal body armour isn't worth crap versus a headshot anyway, so you may as well be agile and mobile and have the advantage that any red-blooded male catching a first glimpse of you is going to take a small pause while he fights the rapid downflow of blood from his brain to his tackle.
Yes, you heard it here first. In the future, the most deadly mercenaries will be the gay ones.
"That leather and fuck-me boots combo is soooo last season." *kapow* "Bitch!"
If you have an automated beer detection system, the bargirl will not have to come over periodically to check your fluid level. You'll end up seeing less of her, employing fewer bar staff, and putting fewer breasty bargirls through college. And hell, college boys need breasty bargirls in their lives as much as the rest of us.
This is essentially what this invention is all about ; bar owners want to hire fewer staff to make more profits.
They're not dumb. They're getting exactly what they want, which is to restrict the fair use rights of the consumer in the pursuit of greater profits ; if they can prevent the average Joe manipulating the music through his computer, they can sell more ringtones (bigger than the singles market now), digital music (especially for your DRM enabled player), and so forth. The argument that it's to prevent piracy is pretty transparent, precisely because of the demographic the technology is targetting. Which is over 90% of the installed user base for the consumer OS market.
The vast majority of their clientele will have Windows, with the CD-ROM Autorun feature switched on. The fact that the technology does nothing to prevent copying by the tech-savvy demographic indicates that they know that there is nothing they can do to prevent "cracking" of their protection schemes. They would love a universally uncrackable scheme, but they know that such a thing is not achievable. So they have settled for a scheme that nets them more money from a demographic that they can push around, and pointed the finger of blame at "those dirty smelly hacker pirates".
... is already using stackless Python, so it's a proven, successful multiplayer online game platform. EVE has upwards of 10,000 players most of the time.
I second this. All our old labs at uni had Model Ms. If I knew then, what I know now, I would've waltzed out of there with a couple. Without doubt, the best typing device ever.
Nothing beats the feel of a keyboard that has a heavy metal baseplate that you could conceivably bludgeon your PHB to death with. And afterwards, it would still work.
There is some debate as to whether SPs are even worth it.
On the one hand, lots of people use them. On the other hand, any RDBMS engine worth it's salt caches execution plans. Once you assume that, if you use parameterised queries, you get all the performance benefits of SPs with none of the headaches of maintainence in a place other than your code. If you really must re-configure SQL in the fly without compiles, keep them in text files, or a table, or another resource. Even a consistent query generation code will reap the performance benefits of execution plan caching after the first execution.
The problem with DRM is still the degree of control it enables a small group (publishers) to exert over a large group (consumers), and to remove or impede the exercise of fair-use rights that the consumer previously took for granted.
Opening up the source is actually liable to make the impact worse.
Firstly, a well-designed cryptosystem does not become insecure because you know the sourcecode ; the only thing you have to keep secure is the keys. Modern cryptosystems are generally not considered to be secure unless they have been picked over by a whole bunch of hackers.
So opening up the source to public scrutiny would only enhance the strength of the system. While there are uses of DRM that would benefit the common man (like documents that only open for their intended recipient), the downside is that the very same features in corporate hands represent a huge imbalance of power.
Regardless of whether a learned behviour has no genetic component, it follows that it is still Darwinism when a lethal force acts to remove it from the population.
As Dawkins has so ably decribed, memetic effects have an equal, if not greater effect on species fitness (partciularly in complex organisms like humans).
For example, take a group of Calahari bushmen and a group of New Yorkers. Both groups are, genetically speaking, practically identical. But transpose their environments, and I can guarantee the New Yorkers would be in dire straits within days. How the Bushmen would fare in the Apple is another matter. The only real differences between them are those of culture, making their memetics paramount to their survival. Memetic traits can be passed regardless of genetic lineage (everyone reading Slashdot right now is exchanging memes).
Well, as other posters state, brain cells don't necessarily regenerate (although the matter in them may well be exchanged by cell maintainence processes).
However, this IS the way to do it right. Slowly replace your brain functions with the functions of prosthetic tissue that behaves identically but is "immortal". As old brain tissue dies off, the new, techno-brain takes over functions. No interruption of consciousness ; fewer doubts about the authenticity of ones being. When your organic brain is finally dead, you can think about upgrading yourself, because you'll have backups that can have perfect fidelity.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's an in-house web application, and he's not distributing it to a third party, the GPL requirement to distribute code along with his application no longer applies. The users are using the services the software provides, but at no time is it distributed to them.
Of course, GPL 3 works around this by applying to web services as well as software distribtion. So it's just a question of when / if MySQL AB adopts GPL 3.
The documents for the GPS system all claim that it's about reducing road congestion, but I do not find this justification to be credible.
Firstly, there are ways for charging tolls on congested roads that are far cheaper and easier to implement than putting a "Little Brother" in everyones car. A mandatory RFID unit in the number plate and a pickup loop in the road come to mine. And secondly, it's not credible that road pricing is any more effective at reducing congestion on roads that are the only viable option for a particular commute, in the light that the far more obvious negative motivator of the unpleasantness of driving in a traffic jam does not have a similar effect.
The disadvantage of this method is that it can only track you in areas with the infrastructure. Of course, this is not a disadvantage of your only goal (as stated) is to reduce congestion. On the other hand, it's a real downer if your real aim is to track the whereabouts of every vehicle in Britain, whether they be on the motorway or the moors. Since the alternative is so much cheaper to implement (by their own estimates, a GPS onboard unit would cost £100, without the labour to fit it, some £3 billion pounds to fit to the UK fleet of 30 million vehicles), one has to conclude that this is their aim.
Once you note the EU directives quoted in these documents that refer to an EU-wide standard for GPS road-tolling, it's not difficult to see that this is something that has had widespread approval for some time.
And you have to start wondering about the real reasons for Galileo. They can claim they want independance from the US, and the way the US has been acting, this is more credible now. But one of the features of Galileo is that it has been designed to operate far better than GPS in urban areas, which would seem ideal for the purpose of vehicular tracking. I can't help but make the association.
Please. For the people who've not seen the movie yet. Which include me, because I was too busy to see it in the theatre at the time.
I spent a couple of seconds working out who "Walsh" was. And then I felt hugely let down.
Grr.
On British roads, I'm prepared to bet that you could even use existing infrastructure - the inductions loops fitted in roads as traffic-light pickups would probably make fine antennae for the RFID tags.
I'm sure that I can't be the only person to come to this obvious conclusion, which is why I'm doubtful about the motivation for this scheme ; if it's just about road charging and congestion reduction, then the RFID method achieves these aims at substantially lower cost. The only limitation it has is coverage :- you are limited to tracking the movement of vehicles on roads with RFID pickups. If your scheme is to charge for movement on busy roads to reduce congestion, then you only need coverage for those roads.
Employing Ockhams' Razor ; the UK govermnent must want 100% coverage, if they are prepared to spend so much extra to get it. Since 100% coverage is not required to fulfill their stated aims, and a cheaper solution exists which would achieve their stated goals, their actual goals must be different from those stated. The obvious goal that 100% tracking coverage satisfies is the automated surveillance of their citizens movements.
They want to track us all, and they are lying about it. That strikes me as deeply sinister.
And here's a link to the full text.
The real bitch is the drop in Energy Profit Ratio.
Oil has historically required one barrel of oil, to extract thirty, although this decreases as the well becomes emptied. Biofuels, as noted elsewhere on this thread, have an EPR more like 1:3. The alternative fossil sources such as oil shale are all unproven technologies, but none have a projected EPR above 5.
The western economy depends on growth. How fast do you think it will continue to grow when energy costs 10 times as much? We are dependant on fossil fuels as energy and feedstock for heat, light, food, transport, plastics, pharamaceuticals, chemicals.
It doesn't take a sudden absence of fuel. A mere decline in the supply, particularly at a time when demand is set to rise sharply with the growth of the Chinese economy and others, should be sufficient to precipitate a recession of epic proportions.
It takes 10 calories of oil to produce every calorie of food the US consumes. I'd imagine all our belts will be tightening when we have less than one tenth (1:3 = 2 spare barrels instead of 29 spare) of the energy to devote to lining our bellies.
The point being, that human beings believe that God is benevolent, and loves them. If he is omnipotent, he may arrange matters as he wishes. Therefore, if a person suffers, it is because God wishes them to suffer. Which makes a lie of the claim of benevolence. Or God is unaware of the suffering, which rules out omniscience. Or God cannot create conditions under which people are happy (or even lack suffering). Which rules out omnipotence. If a supernatural being exists, it must lack between one and three of these qualities which are usually assigned to God (or the being is absent), in order for the observable facts to be consistent.
Yes, I agree that a superintelligent being would probably have some actions and motivations that would confuse me. But since we are simple beings, driven by simple urges, how can such a being i) Fail to understand what makes us suffer, and conversely, makes us happy (esp. since said being is our alleged creator). ii) Fail to be able to create an environment in which suffering ends.
Anticipated card played by opponent .... "Free Will : Man Chooses to Suffer"
Free will is horseshit. My free will sayeth : I will now fly around the room in my jimjams. It doesn't happen. That's because I lack wings/jetboots/antigrav belt. We never have free will, because we are always constrained by the limitations of our bodies, minds and environment. Who defined the bodies, minds, enviroment? They are either the result of an impersonal universe of forces, or someone who knew all along what he was creating, before he created it. If the latter, since it was inevitable that much suffering would occur (and he must have been aware of that, if he possesses the attributes detailed in various religious texts), that would make him a sadist of the highest order.
My non-belief in God is just that ; a belief. It requires faith, as does the position the theist must adopt. I cannot disprove the existence of supernatural being(s). But my observations cannot reconcile the state of the world and its people with the stated religious dogma of the prevailing faiths. Hence, I find it far more comfortable to realise that nothing in the universe gives a shit, except those remarkable collections of matter within it that have attained sentience.
I mean, if you believe in a deity that treats you like crap and perpetually keeps you in the dark about his plans for you, that's your problem. Sounds like something very similar to your Father/Son scenario.
Like all forms of suffering, you can just play the "Mysterious Ways" trump card, and be instantly absolved of explaining why a being that is supposedly omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent permits suffering to happen.
The obvious logical explanation is that either there is no such being ; either it is absent or a supernatural sentience does exist, but lacks at least one of those three qualities (i.e. it doesn't know, can't do anything about it or doesn't care).
Of course, logical arguments are usually countered with the "La-la-la, I'm not listening." move or the "Repeat my viewpoint over and over again in lieu of actually providing a chain of logic" tactic.
You could proabably make a trading card game based on this ... "Atheists vs <insert most culturally appropriate religion here>". Heck, you could have different sets of booster packs for each religion. I hereby patent this idea!
"Theology : The Blathering"
Not true ; in order to get the material into a state which *can* be centrifuged (or other means of seperation, like gas chromatography), you do need noxious chemicals aplenty, like flourine.
Yes. Existing internal combustion engines all emit water in their exhausts ; the thing is that they also emit carbon dioxide (and a few other things in smaller amounts). This is because they burn hydrocarbon fuels, which are largely compounds of carbon and ... hydrogen.
While H2 engines would emit more water than hydrocarbon engines for a given amount of output, the water is going to be driven off road surfaces by the usual forces that drive exhaust water off roads now ; friction heating by tyres, radiative heating by engines, and turbulent convection caused by passing vehicles.
You haven't been playing Hostile Waters enough.
"The Market" gives arise, by darwinian evolution, to entities that are the most efficient at extracting profit.
This has nothing to do with peoples health.
By all means, make the buggers compete with each other, but not for profits ; make them compete for number of people healed. Or whatever.
American corporate law states that the profit of the shareholders is the primary consideration. Corporations are legally required to do that which maximises profits, even if it offends their personal sensibilities. After a while, only those people with no personal moral codes can put up with this, which is why it is certainly not cream that floats to the top of American industry.
Seriously, if this company had determined that the best way to maximise profits was to produce image discrimination software that made it easier for psychotic dictators to precision-bomb orphanages with anthrax, that's what they would be doing. Because under American law, it would be illegal for them to ignore that avenue of profits.
Until western culture learns to value things other than money and power, this will continue. Of course, by making things like happy family life, unpolluted environments, health, good food and security such rarities, they are already working to increase their value ; who knows, in a couple of decades, maybe they will be rare enough to be valuable....
How the hell is that going to make any difference?
CLI Browsers don't follow tags, not even to convert the pictures into ASCII art.....
There was actually a question on the Nanodot board a while ago by a chap who was researching the feasibility of embedding a unique identifier in *every* round of ammunition, using barcoded fragments of microscopic wire, or similar. So there are people who want to make a buck from this.
We pointed out that that it would require the mother of all gun-control bills to pass to be a viable product, and that the NRA would probably have hunted him down long before that.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that it was sabotaged by those with an interest in the continued used of fossil fuels.
Yes, you heard it here first. In the future, the most deadly mercenaries will be the gay ones.
"That leather and fuck-me boots combo is soooo last season." *kapow* "Bitch!"
No, no, no.
If you have an automated beer detection system, the bargirl will not have to come over periodically to check your fluid level. You'll end up seeing less of her, employing fewer bar staff, and putting fewer breasty bargirls through college. And hell, college boys need breasty bargirls in their lives as much as the rest of us.
This is essentially what this invention is all about ; bar owners want to hire fewer staff to make more profits.
The vast majority of their clientele will have Windows, with the CD-ROM Autorun feature switched on. The fact that the technology does nothing to prevent copying by the tech-savvy demographic indicates that they know that there is nothing they can do to prevent "cracking" of their protection schemes. They would love a universally uncrackable scheme, but they know that such a thing is not achievable. So they have settled for a scheme that nets them more money from a demographic that they can push around, and pointed the finger of blame at "those dirty smelly hacker pirates".
... is already using stackless Python, so it's a proven, successful multiplayer online game platform. EVE has upwards of 10,000 players most of the time.
Nothing beats the feel of a keyboard that has a heavy metal baseplate that you could conceivably bludgeon your PHB to death with. And afterwards, it would still work.
There is some debate as to whether SPs are even worth it.
On the one hand, lots of people use them. On the other hand, any RDBMS engine worth it's salt caches execution plans. Once you assume that, if you use parameterised queries, you get all the performance benefits of SPs with none of the headaches of maintainence in a place other than your code. If you really must re-configure SQL in the fly without compiles, keep them in text files, or a table, or another resource. Even a consistent query generation code will reap the performance benefits of execution plan caching after the first execution.
When next I build a DB app, I won't be using SPs.
Opening up the source is actually liable to make the impact worse.
Firstly, a well-designed cryptosystem does not become insecure because you know the sourcecode ; the only thing you have to keep secure is the keys. Modern cryptosystems are generally not considered to be secure unless they have been picked over by a whole bunch of hackers.
So opening up the source to public scrutiny would only enhance the strength of the system. While there are uses of DRM that would benefit the common man (like documents that only open for their intended recipient), the downside is that the very same features in corporate hands represent a huge imbalance of power.
Regardless of whether a learned behviour has no genetic component, it follows that it is still Darwinism when a lethal force acts to remove it from the population. As Dawkins has so ably decribed, memetic effects have an equal, if not greater effect on species fitness (partciularly in complex organisms like humans). For example, take a group of Calahari bushmen and a group of New Yorkers. Both groups are, genetically speaking, practically identical. But transpose their environments, and I can guarantee the New Yorkers would be in dire straits within days. How the Bushmen would fare in the Apple is another matter. The only real differences between them are those of culture, making their memetics paramount to their survival. Memetic traits can be passed regardless of genetic lineage (everyone reading Slashdot right now is exchanging memes).
Well, as other posters state, brain cells don't necessarily regenerate (although the matter in them may well be exchanged by cell maintainence processes). However, this IS the way to do it right. Slowly replace your brain functions with the functions of prosthetic tissue that behaves identically but is "immortal". As old brain tissue dies off, the new, techno-brain takes over functions. No interruption of consciousness ; fewer doubts about the authenticity of ones being. When your organic brain is finally dead, you can think about upgrading yourself, because you'll have backups that can have perfect fidelity.